Logic analyzer instrument

Tampere University Foundation sr (Contracting authority) is publishing direct award notice for 'Logic analyzer instrument'.

BACKGROUND INFO The procurement is an incremental step in the long-term plan to set up a state-of-the-art microe-lectronics measurement laboratory, as part of Tampere University's strategic move to strength-en its presence in microelectronics research and teaching. The aim is to equip the laboratory to characterize a wide range of high-performance digital, analog, RF, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), including radio, wireline, and optical communication transceivers; high-performance and low-energy analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters; biomedical inter-face circuits, etc. The laboratory will be used to measure and characterize IC prototypes de-signed at the university. In addition to research, the laboratory may also be useful for teaching when the plan for the IC design project courses becomes a reality. NEED As stated above, the microelectronics measurement laboratory needs to be equipped to characterize wideband high-speed mixed-signal ICs. As output, such ICs often produce large amounts of digital data that need to be extracted from the IC and analyzed. In research projects, where time and human resources are often highly limited, it is common to use a high-speed parallel digital bus consisting of dozens of one-bit lanes to extract data, due to the design simplicity of this method. Typically, data from such a bus can be captured for further analysis with a logic analyzer built into an oscilloscope. However, in research projects aiming to push the bandwidth and speed limits of the mixed-signal ICs, the number of lanes and their bit-toggling speed can easily exceed the capabilities of such analyzers. For example, an analog-to-digital converter operating at a sample rate higher than 1 GHz with a resolution of more than 8 bits can have an output parallel bus with more than 16 lanes operating at a bit-toggling speed of several hundred megahertz. Thus, to characterize advanced mixed-signal ICs in the microelectronics measure-ment laboratory, a dedicated high-performance logic analyzer is needed. Considering the described measurement tasks, the logic analyzer shall have at least 32 input channels to guarantee the capability to capture even buses with very large numbers of lanes. At the same time, the instrument shall support a bit-toggling speed exceeding 500 MHz to charac-terize wideband ICs, and it shall therefore have a sample rate of at least 2 GHz. For better anal-ysis quality, the instrument should preferably offer operation modes with higher sample rates, potentially at the expense of the number of active channels in those modes. Importantly, to sup-port high-speed buses, the instrument should also offer probing solutions with a capacitance below 1 pF. Finally, to ensure the flexibility crucial for research tasks, the logic analyzer shall be general-purpose; namely, it shall not be designed for any specific protocol and shall impose min-imal requirements on the analyzed buses. CONCLUSION FOR DIRECT AWARD The conducted market survey shows that the majority of logic analyzers that offer the required sample rate and number of channels are not general-purpose. Instead, they are tailored to spe-cific buses and protocols, such as those used for double-data-rate memory, and come with probing solutions intended for use only with those buses. General-purpose instruments available on the market, at the same time, typically target low-speed buses and therefore do not meet the sample rate requirement. Lastly, the analyzers built into the available oscilloscopes most often have no more than 16 channels, and the only model offering more channels lacks compatible low-capacitance probes and barely meets the minimum required bit-toggling speed. The only instrument identified that meets all the mentioned requirements without compromising any of them is Keysight 16862A. It is general-purpose, has 64 channels sampled at a 2.5-GHz rate, and, with options "T10" and "700", supports additional operating modes with 32 channels at a 5-GHz and 16 channels at a 10-GHz sample rate. In addition to the standard Keysight U4203A flying-lead probes, this instrument supports Keysight U4204A connectorless "soft-touch" probes with a capacitance below 0.7 pF. As no reasonable alternative to Keysight 16862A with the mentioned options and probes was found in the market survey, the direct award of this contract to Keysight Technologies Finland Oy is justified.